Re: Bookmark 'stability'
Ruben Verborgh <[email protected]>
| Newsgroups | gmane.comp.web.services.rest |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
Hi Paul,
>>> "Cool URIs don't change" is not a RESTful principle.
>>
>> If there’s no stability, how can a REST system possibly work?
>
> In HTTP you can always redirect using the status codes:
That means we agree, because, to return a status code for a certain URI,
it has to remain stable.
E.g., if the original URI is /things/a and the new one is /things/b,
then a 30x to /things/b is perfectly acceptable
and makes /things/a still al Cool URI,
because it still has the same mapping (although with different mechanics).
What, however, would not be cool,
is if /things/a gave a 404,
but /things/b happily provided the resource.
This would mean that the semantic validity of the /things/a mapping has not been maintained.
> Finally resources may actually disappear as part of the business logic
> that the system supports. So requesting some URI:s will simply return
> 404 (Not Found) or 410 (Gone). Clients simply have to deal with that.
If they disappear, than a 404/410 is acceptable
and it is *still* a Cool URI, because it correctly tells that the resource does not exist anymore.
Moral of the story:
a URI should maintain same mapping for its entirely lifetime,
although the mapped resource and its state my change over time.
Best,
Ruben
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